White privilege: grey zones. Portuguese migrants in Angola

It is often assumed that South-North migrations are fundamentally different from North-South ones. That White privilege is unequivocal, universal and tendentially homogenous – while simultaneously invisible for those who have it. This article confronts these assumptions by putting the spotlight on subjective experiences of awkwardness and vulnerability, embodied by White Europeans living in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Portuguese work migrants to Angola, and critically engaging conceptualizations of “structural oblivion” and “white double consciousness”, the article unpacks the remodulation of White subjectivities in a contemporary postcolonial Black-majority context. It argues that the comforts of the deep-rooted White privilege were counterbalanced (but not nullified) by postcolonial political and economic changes, and implicit and explicit indictments to reckon with the past.